Monday, June 10, 2013

Apps, 80/20.

I'd done it in a post here, but thought I'd redo the math with the latest numbers Apple gave.

Announced at WWDC today, 900,000 apps, with $10 Billion paid to developers. That works out to $11,111 per app. But I can tell you that not every app gets that! Using the 80/20 rule, 20% of the apps would get 80% of the money. That seems more likely.

So 180,000 apps share 8 Billion, for an average of $44,444 per app. (With the sad other 720,000 sharing $2 Billion and making $2,777 for their average. That seems more like it.)

Applying the 80/20 rule over and over, so at each level 20% of the apps get 80% of the money...
900,000 share $10,000,000,000 for$11,111 each
180,000 share$8,000,000,000 for$44,444 each
36,000 share$6,400,000,000 for$177,778 each
7,200 share$5,120,000,000 for$711,111 each
1,440 share$4,096,000,000 for$2,844,444 each
288 share$3,276,800,000 for$11,377,778 each
58 share$2,621,440,000 for$45,511,111 each
12 share$2,097,152,000 for$182,044,444 each

So you've got to be in about the top 0.8% of apps to start getting close to $1 million. And the very top apps make a lot! The top ~0.16% sharing 40% of the total App Store profits.

(And applying just once more on the lower side, the bottom 80% sharing the bottom 20%: 576,000 sharing $400 million, for $695 per app. Which seems about right.)